Qualla: Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JOSÉ AMARO JR, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Trans-Amazonian Highway slices straight through it, and you can trace the damage from the air. On either side of the BR-230, the forest has been scraped back to pasture and soybean, and what remains has been stripped of its biggest trees. Between the Xingu River on the west and the Tocantins on the east, a 26-million-hectare ecoregion carries a grim distinction: after the Tocantins-Pindare forests next door, this is the most deforested corner of the Amazon. But fly low enough, or follow the blackwater tributaries upstream, and the other story emerges - jaguars, hyacinth macaws, spider monkeys, and river dolphins still moving through forest that refuses to surrender.

Image: JOSÉ AMARO JR | CC BY-SA 4.0

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: Between Two Rivers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hallel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ecoregion is defined by water. The Xingu draws its western boundary and the Tocantins its eastern, both great rivers running south to north, draining the Brazilian Shield into the Amazon. Between them, the Araguaia carves its middle and lower basin through the heart of the re...

Image: Hallel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: Forests Planted by Hands Long Gone

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit IsabeleC, CC BY-SA 4.0. The rainforest here is drier than the forests further west, and it shows. The canopy reaches forty meters in the north but thins southward, and there are fewer epiphytes clinging to the trunks, fewer orchids spilling from the branches. Liana forests cover large tracts of the rich...

Image: IsabeleC | CC BY-SA 4.0

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: What Still Moves in the Trees

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roberto Franco Junior, CC BY-SA 4.0. Biologists have catalogued 153 mammal species here - modest by Amazon standards, but 90 of them are bats and the rest include jaguars, cougars, South American tapirs, and white-lipped peccaries that move in herds of fifty or more. Eight species of primates live in the canopy, amo...

Image: Roberto Franco Junior | CC BY-SA 4.0

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: The Highway and the Smelter

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Luiz Fernando Matos, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Trans-Amazonian Highway was cut through in the 1970s as a nationalist dream of integration, and it opened the forest to everything that has happened since. BR-230 runs west to east across the ecoregion; BR-422 runs north to south along the Tocantins. The land adjacent to both...

Image: Luiz Fernando Matos | CC BY-SA 4.0

Xingu-Tocantins-Araguaia Moist Forests: What Remains

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hector Bottai, CC BY-SA 4.0. Conservation has not surrendered. The Tapirapé Biological Reserve and Tapirapé-Aquiri National Forest hold intact forest in the south, near the Carajás range, and smaller reserves and indigenous territories preserve pockets elsewhere. The populated river towns - São Félix do Xing...

Image: Hector Bottai | CC BY-SA 4.0